Twitter hosts premium video content from world’s top publishers and collaborates with them to develop and scale diverse video content that people are interested in.

“With the launch of ‘In-Stream Video Ads’ in India, it now creates an opportunity for advertisers to better align with relevant video content at scale across 15 content categories. These publishers are established hand picked partners, ensuring brand safety for our advertisers,” said Soumya Parmar, Head of Video Solutions, Twitter India.

“The importance of storytelling through videos is undeniable, and we are excited to be the launch partners for Twitter In-Stream Ads in India,” said Rachna Lather, Marketing Head, Lenovo MBG and Motorola Mobility.

With 328 million users globally, Twitter is making video experiences better for consumers, publishers and advertisers by investing in the video viewing experience through updates to the platform, content development and video ad solutions. The Micro-blogging platform offers 15 content categories that advertisers can choose from, thereby making the solution scalable across premium content consumed on the platform.

The lab at Guangdong General Hospital, a joint project with a company in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, was established to promote the clinical applications to further development the technology.

About 6.7 million structural heart disease patients in China need surgery, with the disease featuring a wide range of individual differences, complex treatment plans and difficult surgeries, according to Zhuang Jian, the hospital’s president and an expert in cardiovascular medicine.

The hospital’s affiliated Guangdong Cardiovascular Institute has made 3-D printed models for 28 patients with congenital heart disease.

In treating a 2-year-old child in September, for example, the 3-D printed model helped doctors identify the exact cause of the disease and helped reduce the time to find four tiny lung-related airway structures from the usual two to three hours to 30 minutes.

The printed heart models are based on imaging examination results, with the whole heart and specific areas available.

The models also aid communication with patients’ families, showing them the situation and the surgical plan.

Models printed with hard materials are used for teaching; those with soft materials assist in the treatment of patients.

As a short-term goal, the lab hopes to use the models to assist in diagnosis, surgical guidance and clinical treatments involving blood flow.

In the medium term, it hopes to be able to print tailor-made items for transplantation.

In the long run, it hopes to produce artificial hearts using cell cultures as the 3-D material.

The hospital also plans to build a bank of 3-D models of various heart disease cases, which can help with teaching, Zhuang said.

Zheng Zhe, assistant president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences’ Fuwai Hospital, and an expert in cardiovascular diseases, said the present cardiovascular models printed with 3-D technology are mostly used for teaching.

“3-D models make teaching easier than with pictures alone,” he said. “But most models are not detailed enough for clinical use.”

For the present, experienced doctors can give good diagnoses of cardiovascular diseases with 3-D images displayed on a computer, he said.

Whether 3-D models will become popular will be largely decided by the materials used in the printing, he said, adding that models made of cells will be much more useful.

This satellite series was designated as the Michibiki, with its fourth satellite launched from the Tanegashima Space Centre in the country’s Kagoshima prefecture on a H-IIA rocket.

The first Michibiki satellite was launched in September 2010.

According to The Japan Times, the Japanese government plans to start supplying positional data gathered by the four Michibiki satellites by fiscal year 2018. These four will move almost directly above Japan.

Global Positioning System data from the Michibiki satellites will be used in a self-driving bus experiment scheduled for November.

“We’re planning to conduct in November an experiment on a self-driving bus utilising the Michibiki system on the main island of Okinawa,” said Go Takizawa, executive director of the Quasi-Zenith Satellite System Strategy Office at the Cabinet Office’s National Space Policy Secretariat.

The Michibiki system was built to complement Global Positioning System.

It would help to increase accuracy, enhancing navigation capabilities through satellite positioning data.

Other applications for the enhanced satellite positioning performance include tourism navigation which combines augmented reality technology with GPS data from the satellites. The Japanese government plans to have up to seven Michibiki satellites released in orbit by 2023. Doing so would allow the system to operate independently of the Global Positioning System.

Restaurant-booking app Chope yesterday announced a S$18 million investment led by Square Peg Capital and joined by C31 Ventures and Moelis Australia, as well as existing shareholders, including SPH Ventures, NSI Ventures, Susquehanna International Group and DSG Consumer Partners.

The company plans to use the growth funding to build better products, enlist a larger sales force and enhance customer support.

Chope said it has more than 3,000 food and beverage clients across Singapore, Hong Kong, mainland China, Indonesia and Thailand using its suite of technologies to manage bookings, queues, customer relationship management, promotions and pre-payments. – The Straits Times

Touch and go issue for iPhones

Future iPhones may no longer have Touch ID fingerprint sensors as part of their features.

According to a report on MacRumors, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted that Face ID would be Apple’s new trump card over Android smartphone competitors.

Kuo predicts the company would leverage the technological advantage of the TrueDepth camera system when it comes to 3D sensing design and production.

On the flip side, a previous report by KGI stated that the Face ID feature would become a major bottleneck in the production of iPhone Xs. They predicted 30 million to 35 million iPhone X units would be shipped in 2017, a step down from an earlier estimate of 40 million.

Apple software engineering chief Craig Federighi also hinted that the company may not be ready to fully transition away from fingerprint authentication just yet. This means some iPhones released in 2018 may still be equipped with Touch ID authentication. – Philippine Daily Inquirer

Cryptocurrency Group meets

The Khmer Crypto Foundation, a Cambodian assortment of over a 100 bitcoin and digital currency investors and enthusiasts, held its first general meeting with the aim to educate members about how to comply with potential regulations governing the use of blockchain technology, according to a press release on Sunday.

In Mean, lead developer of the Khmer Crypto Foundation, was quoted in the release as saying that group hopes to soon submit its own cryptocurrency framework to the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC). Currently, the NBC is working with a Japanese firm to develop a national blockchain-based payment system. – The Phnom Penh Post

Sophia computes with UN leader

A robot called Sophia was bestowed the honour of speaking with United Nations deputy secretary-general Amina J. Mohammed during the day-long event “The Future of Everything: sustainable development in the age of rapid technological change”, in the Philippines

Sophia answered several questions asked by Mohammed, to the best of its abilities. However, it admitted it’s still learning.

One of the questions Mohammed asked involved the distribution of Internet access to the rest of the world. Sophia answered by quoting William Gibson, “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed.”

Sophia then proceeded to talk about the benefits of artificial intelligence. One benefit allows for a more efficient way of evenly distributing the world’s resources and technology.

Sophia was created by a Hong Kong-based company called Hanson Robotics. The company aims to humanise robots and calls this the “Sophia quest. – Philippine Daily Inquirer

The Singapore hub would be followed by sister hubs in Japan, Scotland and Canada, the firm said in a media release on Monday.

The Singapore hub would serve the existing need in the market and help position the country as a global leader in AI technologies, expected to be a key growth engine of the future economy, said the firm.

Many ideas in the field of AI in Singapore are still research focused and an incubator like Marvelstone can bridge the gap to commercialise them for future deployment by government and corporates, it said.

Said Marvelstone president Joel KO Hyun Sik: “There is a clear need for a big playground for start-ups, entrepreneurs, and even corporates in the field of AI. Considering the high interest and demand for AI globally, there are still relatively few places to test these new technologies.

“Our goal will be to build 100 AI start-ups per year and attract global AI talent to come to Singapore to incubate their own applications and collaborate with our local teams. We’re extremely excited about this vision and believe AI will represent an unparalleled theatre of growth of the future.”

Multinational corporations and institutions that partner with the AI hub would benefit from access to innovative AI start-ups, in turn creating demand for the projects, said the firm. Start-ups could commercialise their products in a more systematic and organised manner, and easily “plug and play” into the corporate segment, it added.

The AI hub is also being planned to co-build products alongside start-ups and help them to commercialise products and identify market fit.

The Robotics Studio sells cutting-edge products that have evolved through the use of artificial intelligence technologies, and allows customers to touch and use them.

The operator of the department store aims to attract customers across generations.

Among 22 products on display are the Sota at 156,600 yen including tax (Bt46,623), which users can enjoy chatting with; “Musio (105,840 yen), which can engage in English conversation; and Laundroid – a laundry-folding robot (1,998,000 yen or above).

Customers touched the robots while asking sales clerks about how to operate them.

Robots have, up until now, been sold mainly at large home appliance stores or online. A Takashimaya official in charge of the section said, “We want to expand sales by holding hands-on events, taking advantage of our ability as a department |store to create unique opportunities.”

The company planned to open another robot section at one of its Kansai stores within the next fiscal year.

Local lawmakers led by Representative Shin Yong-hyun of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea on Tuesday submitted a motion to amend Korea’s Bioethics and Safety Act to expand the permitted scope of gene therapy research to include all diseases.

Right now, the act restricts gene therapy research to only those related to genetic diseases, cancer, AIDS and diseases without a viable treatment option, putting a cap on the types of potential treatments and technologies involving gene modification.

Under this law, scientists are unable to start preliminary research on gene therapies targetting major illnesses like degenerative arthritis and |diseases of the eye that are in |need of new, improved treatments.

Shin has proposed adopting a “negative regulation” system for gene therapy R&D. Using |this approach, anything is considered legal as long as they |are not expressly banned.

It differs from “positive regulation” which acts like a whitelist, laying out what it permits and in theory banning anything not covered.

If adopted, the changes are expected to provide Korean scientists with greater freedom to pursue gene therapy research and development for a wider range of diseases and conditions.

“Korea’s current Bioethics and Safety Act places a vague boundary on the type of gene therapy research that can be permitted,” Shin said.

“Because of this, researchers are afraid to start new research in their field in fear of breaking the law. “Considering the need to boost our life sciences technology development, we need to adopt a ‘negative regulation’ system for the gene therapy R&D sector,” he added.

Most developed countries outside of Korea do not place limitations on the types of diseases that a gene therapy can be developed for. The US only bans the clinical applications of gene therapies involving embryonic stem cell and germ cells, while permitting privately funded laboratory-level research.

Korea is considered to possess strengths in gene therapy research, with leadership in areas like the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing tool that lets scientists edit parts of the genome by removing, adding or altering sections of the DNA sequence.

Despite the technological lead, Korean scientists have long cited difficulties in pursuing gene therapy research due to bioethics |regulations that are considered to be more conservative compared to those of other countries including the US, Japan and China.

Those who oppose changes to Korea’s current bioethics law claim that gene editing techniques could be misused as well as create unpredictable side effects in the long run.

Meanwhile, others argue that Korea needs to create a more open environment for developing gene therapies and gene editing techniques if it does not want to lag behind global rivals in the sector.